How long does your brew day take with your electric systems?

[Brooothru]

I use a 20litre Braumeister, usually doing 23litre (in the fermenter) batches. I fill the system the night before (and my 8 litre sparge water pot). On brewday I start at 7am (switch on system to start heating) it is usually in the fermenter by 12:00/13:00 depending on mash steps and length of boil. So maximum 6 hours for the brewday and 1 hour to clean up.

Same equipment and very similar timeline, though I usually do a 1+30 step mash and 75 minute boil. Following boil and chill I do a 30 minute whirlpool/hopstand before pumping to the fermenter and pitching/oxygenating, so I don't get down to the heavy lift (cleaning) until the wort is in the fermenter.

 

[Zenmeister]

Six and a half to seven hours on a Spike 20 Gallon three vessel system. This is from start (fill the HLT and turn it on) to end (put everything away in a cleaned and RTG for next brew day). It does take about an hour or perhaps a little more at the start to heat up the MT to strike temps, and then takes another 20-30 minutes getting the MT to mash out temps. All this is time spent drinking coffee, reading the newspaper ("What's a newspaper?", says the millennial) or organizing my day. The "real" brew day, i.e. starting from when the MT is at strike temp, is about 5.5-ish hours.

 

[sicktght311]

FYI, with my 120v system, late last week I needed to knock out an evening brew session, so I turned it on at 530 pm with 90-100 degree water already in the kettles (I filled and heated it up to around 180 the night before and shut everything down), and i was done brewing by 1030pm. 1ish hour to heat up to strike temp, 1 hour mash, 35 minute quick sparge, 45 minute ramp to boil, 1 hour boil, 5 minutes to chill to whirlpool temp, 30 minute whirlpool hops, then another 10 minutes to final knockout to fermenter. Shut everything down and I cleaned up the next day.

 

[brewbama]

I don’t rush. start to finish is ~5 hrs.

 

[Ninoid]

BIAB 5g, 220V/2kW element, no sparge, no chill up to 5 hours with cleaning.
Pitch yeast next day.

 

[zacster]

I brewed today for the first time since originally posting this and it took 6.5-7 hours beginning to end. Part of the extra time over the usual 6 for me was that I had some whirlpool hops in the recipe, which adds time at the end. I then ran the immersion chiller but that was quick because the water is so cold at this time of year. I also took my time cleaning up although I didn't make as big a mess as usual.

It was my usual BIAB 5g batch on a stove top with a high output burner. It is just enough to hold a boil but is very slow to get things up to temp.

 

[Mac MacFarlane]

I brew after kids go to bed, usually takes about 4hours on my brewzilla. I clean everything as I go and whatever doesn’t get clean that night I’ll do it the next day.

 

[SFC Rudy]

I use two Mash & Boil units and a typical brew day is 4 1/2 hours.

 

[Nick Poggetti]

For the past year, I've been brewing at night. Which I never thought I'd do after having kids, because I was always so exhausted.

But I've got things dialed in that my evenings look like this on my 1 vesel e-biag setup. These are all rough-ish amounts.

• ~20 Minutes, the night before. Mill grains, fill up kettle with water, add campden, water additions, acid, etc.
• ~5 Minutes, at any point in the leading hours to brewing, turn the heating element on and let it heat up to strike temp. Set up kettle for mash in.
• ~15 Minutes, mash in, set out anything needed for the batch.
• ~90 Minutes Go eat dinner, get kids down to bed. Pull grain bag if mash timer goes off, or leave it in if I'm lazy
• ~90-120 Minutes, boil, cool, transfer/pitch, clean up. Usually I refill the kettle and let it CIP and heat back to 150 then leave the PBW soaking on the heating element till the next day for a rinse.

The great part is the 90ish minutes during the mash just getting the house cleaned up and kids down makes it seem much less time consuming than it really is.,

 

[zacster]

The mash is the only time during the process one can walk away as there is no flame/coil involved. I usually reserve it for some kind of errand.

 

[Martys1]

3 gallon batch in my AF6.5 takes 4 hours.

 

[BarryBrews]

There is so much down time while brewing that it makes it easy to clean as you go. The first brew day the brew is in the fermenter in ~7 hours, the second brew day the obligatory brew cart updates are done and everything is packed away in around 2 hours. The elephant in this discussion is the other brew day, kegging, which of course includes fermenter cleaning and keg cleaning adding another 4 hours. So that's it, three days about 13 hours every 6 weeks costing $50 to $75 for 10 gallons of delicious homebrew. Only wish I could drink more!

 

[zacster]

My keg day doesn't take anywhere near 4 hours. And the second brew day? I don't usually have one except I'm dry hopping so I'll be doing an extra transfer.

 

[Spartan1979]

My kegging day is also much shorter. The kegs are already sanitized and purged. It's just a matter of transferring the beer from the Brew Bucket and then cleaning the brew bucket.

I usually clean, sanitize and purge 5-6 kegs at a time. That process does take several hours of a couple of days.